To develop an evaluative framework for assessing the emergency response capabilities of higher education institutions to major emerging infectious diseases, enabling institutions to identify preparedness gaps and prioritize improvements across the outbreak lifecycle.

The Haddon Matrix was used as the foundation for the framework. A Delphi study with a Likert scale was conducted, followed by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the importance of the indicators.

A consensus was reached on the evaluation system, comprising 3 primary indicators: prevention and preparedness, response and handling, and recovery and rehabilitation. These indicators were further divided into 11 secondary and 34 tertiary indicators. Expert authority coefficients were 0.82 and 0.80, and Kendall’s coefficients were 0.32 and 0.161 (P < 0.001). AHP highlighted prevention and preparedness as the highest-priority domain (weight = 0.426), followed by recovery and rehabilitation (0.326). High-priority items included safety knowledge dissemination, emergency command systems, primary prevention, and timely warning and monitoring.

Integrating the Haddon matrix, Delphi consensus, and AHP, this study delivers a validated, prioritized framework to assess universities’ MEID response capability across phases. External validity beyond Shanghai remains to be established; cross-regional applicability should be empirically tested through multi-site validation, broader stakeholder representation, and evaluation of technology-enabled components, particularly in resource-limited settings.